Jack felt the floor beneath him trembled before several large spikes burst out. He jumped at the last minute, evading the spikes, and fell to the floor rolling. In his hasty move, he glanced at Soundeffect who also activated another magic scroll.
The spell formation on Jack’s staff was completed as the Barrier spell took effect just as a sea of flame erupted around him. He felt the flame did continuous damage but his Barrier held. From within the flame, he saw Gridhacker also took out another magic scroll.
‘Crap! These guys were as spendthrift as him!’ Jack exclaimed in his mind. The scrolls he had left were only Wind Jet, recovery ones, and Haste scrolls. He was completely at a disadvantage here.
But before Gridhacker could activate his scroll. A Magic Bind restricted his body, Jack looked at the entrance and saw that Trinity Dawn was there.
His reinforcement had arrived! Thank goodness it was not Bowler, Jack secretly celebrated.
Trinity Dawn could see the situation and the urgency in Jack’s party chat that these people were not friendly, so she took action once she arrived. Spell formations continued to form one after another as she sent them to Gridhacker. Her speed of casting was marvelous. Arcane Turbulence, followed by Ice Nail, followed by another offensive spell which she had not revealed before. A rotating wheel of blades materialized and advanced towards Gridhacker, attempting to cut him in half.
Gridhacker had cast a spell that was capable of freeing himself of the Magic Bind. He then cast Barrier to defend against Trinity Dawn’s Arcane Turbulence, before it was shattered by her Ice Nail. He was now back to using Magic Shield again to defend against the Wheel of Blade.
As Gridhacker was occupied by Trinity Dawn, Jack was freed from his hassle. Not letting go of the chance, he dashed out of the flame. His target was still the rogue, Soundeffect. The Knight’s HP and armor made him a more difficult target to kill.
Soundeffect felt humiliated by Jack’s attempt in targeting him. It gave him the feeling of being underestimated, so he also ran forward to meet Jack in a frontal clash. Soundeffect clashed using normal attacks, utilizing only martial expertise, Jack returned in kind.
But after fighting someone like Red Death, Jack found fighting this guy was less challenging. Perhaps unbeknownst to him, his own martial skill had improved. Apart from that, Soundeffect enjoyed using large movements, in line with his boastful personality. Such large movement was a bane in true combat, it left the practitioner with large windows of weakness.
One such move was when he jumped up and made a roundhouse slash with his dagger, which Jack conveniently dodged by ducking and using the momentum to send an upward kick at him. Jack’s strength stat caused the kick to throw Soundeffect all the way up almost hitting the ceiling which was around twelve meters in height.
Their clash had been going on for only a short few seconds due to both of them had high Dexterity. GraphicZ had just arrived by Jack’s side when Soundeffect was thrown high in the air. He used a Swing at Jack who was still low on the ground after kicking Soundeffect.
Jack pushed on the ground and hung in the air as the horizontal Swing went past under him. He cast Energy Bolts while spinning in the air. The eight bolts flew all around as he was not aiming at all when casting the spell. But it doesn’t matter, there were enemies all around him, so the bolts simply looked for the closest enemies autonomously.
GraphicZ was rather shocked to see that many Energy Bolts, it implied his opponent had leveled up that spell to the highest level. He twirled his broadsword around skillfully, cutting the bolts that come at him and at Jack’s sword that cut down.
GraphicZ suddenly felt himself getting grabbed on his left shoulder. Jack had stored his magic staff and used his free left hand to grip his shoulder. Then he felt the guy kicked on his leg. No, not a kick, it’s a step. Before he knew it, the guy’s other feet had gone up to his shoulder as well.
‘F*cking monkey! He was using me as a stepping stone!’ GraphicZ cursed.
Jack kicked again downward and his body went up high into the air. Soundeffect who was falling down was in shock seeing Jack getting closer. Even as he clashed with the Knight, he was still targeting Soundeffect.
In his panic, Soundeffect used his Throwing Weapon skill. Jack ignored the incoming weapon and ate the damage as his magic staff reappeared and he shot Mana Bullet at Soundeffect. Both ranged attacks hit, but obviously, Soundeffect suffered more damage.
As his thrown weapon reappeared on his hand, his distance from Jack had shortened. Jack’s sword was swinging at him from under. Soundeffect thrust his dagger forward to mitigate some of the damages. Their weapons collided and Soundeffect could feel his body got pushed up into the air again.
‘F*cking a*shole was juggling me!’ Soundeffect screamed internally in frustration.
Jack had used Power Strike to keep Soundeffect in the air. As he went down, he made continuous shots at the helpless Rogue. He had activated his staff’s burst attack. Each of his shots sent out three energy balls.
GraphicZ tried to save his comrade by sending continuous slashes at Jack but Jack expertly used his swordsmanship to keep GraphicZ at bay, while his left hand continued to shoot at Soundeffect. Soundeffect himself tried desperately to slash at the range attacks coming his way, but his attack was not enough to offset Jack’s damage. Not to mention how difficult it is to do such a maneuver in the air without any footings.
Sunset had tried to cast Heal again at Soundeffect, but Jack used Shredding Fang at an angle that hit both him and GraphicZ, hindering them both as he continued to shoot at Soundeffect. In the end, Soundeffect lost his life before he even landed back on the ground.
Seeing the situation, Gridhacker gritted his teeth and called for a retreat. He, GraphicZ, and Sunset regrouped together at one corner. Jack had been waiting for them to bundle together. He took out a Disruptive Bomb and threw it at them. But before the bomb exploded, Gridhacker activated a magic scroll and they disappeared.
‘Where are they? Did they use an invisibility spell again?’ Jack asked in his mind.
Peniel responded to his question, “no, if it was an invisibility spell, it would have been dispelled by the bomb’s explosion. That was a Teleport spell.”
So they really had withdrawn. Too bad, if he could just kill one more and threatened the others, he might be able to get more information about their purpose and also about this Master they kept on talking about. He expected these guys would be troublesome opponents.
“Who the heck were those guys?” Trinity Dawn asked. “How did they get here? Was that Sunset just now? Why does he look older? And why is he with them?”
Jack shrugged, “I want the answers to those too, sister.”
Jack looked at where Soundeffect’s corpse was. It had vanished after the battle was over. There were a few coins and a piece of equipment. Jack picked them up. The equipment was rare light armor boots.
Sweet, he thought. He might give this to Flame.
—————
“Who the heck is that guy? How come he is so strong?” GraphicZ asked. They had been teleported out of the dungeon. They were in one of the ruins at the outskirt of the temple. Apparently, there was another entry point to the dungeon, not just the one inside the temple where Jack and the others had entered from. That’s how they had been able to get inside without the army noticing.
They had been waiting for the army to arrive before they entered the dungeon. In the dungeon, they used their knowledge to navigate through it to get to the main hall where the Memory of Elding would have to be used on and hid themselves using a Group Invisibility scroll.
Sunrise had arrived next. They had been expecting him to be the one to activate the artifact, but it turned out the guy just stood there and was also waiting. Sunrise was using disguise at the time so they did not recognize him.
“That’s why I said, do not underestimate him,” Sunrise said to the other two. “He is not just a lucky player who happened to get the Second Soul Remnant. He had fought against a coalition of hundreds of players and not only did he survive, he even beat them to a retreat.”
“You are kidding, right?” GraphicZ said with skepticism.
“I didn’t witness the incident directly, but from the way those famous guilds’ members were evading him later. I’m inclined to believe the news to be true.”
“Death Associates was amongst those famous guilds in the capital, right? I didn’t hear White Death saying anything about that.”
“I doubt he will broadcast such an embarrassing happening to others, won’t he?”
They were silent afterward.
“What should we do now?” Sunrise finally asked.
“We? You still have the gals to ask? If it was not for you losing those items to him, he won’t have progressed this far,” GraphicZ scolded.
“I admit it was my blunder, but I’m sincere about helping. Let me help,” Sunrise pleaded.
“That will depend on Master. We can take you to him and you can make your own case to him. We can’t promise anything,” Gridhacker said.
“Damn it! I almost manage to go into that portal just now. I would have been able to redeem my failure otherwise.”
Gridhacker gave a mocking laugh. “If you did, you will be dead already.”
“I know about the secret method to defeat the boss,” Sunrise said, dissatisfied with the mocking.
“Even if you did, you will still be dead,” Gridhacker replied, but did not bother to explain more.
“So, are we leaving now?” Sunrise asked.
“Are you joking? Of course not, how can we go back with failure?”
“Then, what are we to do?”
“We wait for them to come out. Hopefully, that guy managed to get that item.”
“Wait for him? But, doesn’t it have been proven that we are no match to him?” Sunrise asked.
Gridhacker grinned, “He will get a big surprise once he came out.”
